Beyonce’s creative director, Jenke-Ahmed Tailly, along with the singer’s stylist, Ty Hunter, pointed her in the direction of these designers.
”The album is a musical gumbo of everything Beyonce likes,” Tailly said. ”Each song really has a different personality, so we decided to do the cover like an editorial for a magazine, with each song having its own style.”
The album’s cover image illustrates the singer’s embrace of under-the-radar creators and features Beyonce wearing a fox fur stole by the cult French designer Alexandre Vauthier, embellished with Swarovski crystals by the Lesage embroidery house.
Vauthier’s work also shows up inside the fold-out cover, as does a pair of Daisy Duke shorts by the young French designer Julien Fournie, who founded his brand only three years ago.
Even student designers got a look-in: Lleah Rea, who just received her degree in fashion design this spring from Parsons, the New School for Design in New York, created a form-fitting bodysuit for the album spread.
”It was important to Beyonce that the choice of clothing not be about the brand but about the quality of the work,” said Tailly, who – with the creative consultant Melina Matsoukas – brought Rea’s designs to the singer’s attention.
For the ”deluxe” version of the album, which features extra songs and remixes, a photograph of Beyonce in a purple-and-black beaded dress by the 27-year-old French designer Maxime Simoens replaced the fur stole as the cover image. On the back of both versions of the album, the singer is photographed in a vintage Azzedine Alaia jacket and some gravity-defying high heels by the 36-year-old Dutch designer Jan Taminiau.
Having Beyonce wear their creations has already helped these niche designers garner a higher visibility on the global fashion stage.
Vauthier, for example, has seen his collaboration with the singer evolve. For her appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in Britain earlier this year, Beyonce wore a gold mini dress by Vauthier, chosen at the last minute over a planned ensemble at the suggestion of her husband, Jay-Z, the designer said. Worn with a wide belt and a pair of black hot pants, that outfit helped generate a lot of interest in Vauthier.
”I dress women who have something to say,” said Vauthier, who clothed Rihanna for the cover of her single Hard and whose designs have been worn by the pop singer Roisin Murphy and by Sophia Loren and Isabelle Huppert.
Tailly said Beyonce’s quest to collaborate with new artists did not end with the clothing. She also tapped the young French photographer Greg Gex, alongside renowned photographers Ellen von Unwerth and Tony Duran, to shoot the cover art.
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